Mike Hall: Let the commencements commence

How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning? — Jonathan Swift

I don’t remember who my high school commencement speaker was or what he said.

I realize now why so many commencement speakers are so forgettable — aside from the fact the grads consider the ceremony just an impediment to beginning the after-commencement partying.

They are forgettable because the speakers we really want to hear are too controversial to be invited.

When FLOTUS (first lady of the United States) Michelle Obama agreed to speak to a combined commencement for the three Topeka high schools, she caused a stir.

Most of the objections — the ones stated publicly anyway — weren’t to her speaking in Topeka, but to the fact it would deprive the grads of the three individual schools their traditional commencements with each walking across a stage to receive a diploma and each inviting as many family and friends as they want.

Then came the news that Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state under President George W. Bush, had withdrawn as commencement speaker at Rutgers University because of student and faculty protests over her role in the Iraq war.

I’m pretty sure that if my commencement speaker had been the first lady — and, no, Mary Todd Lincoln wasn’t first lady then — I would have remembered. I might have even remembered something of what she said.

Likewise a former secretary of state.

There are lots of exceptions to the rule that commencement speeches have to be dull.

However, there is only one commencement address that really sticks in my mind and it was more memorable for the newspaper’s coverage than for the message itself.

When Bill Roy was in Congress, he was scheduled to deliver a commencement address to Washburn Rural High School. He got hung up in Congress and couldn’t make it back to Topeka in time, so his wife Jane read the speech he was supposed to give.

She said one of the major problems to be faced by the graduates was overpopulation of the earth.

The newspaper reported it this way:

“ ‘The world’s population has increased by 40 percent — by 1.1 billion in your lifetime. Twenty-five years from now there will be over 6 billion people in the world. And 50 years from now, over 12 billion people will crowd every inhabitable area of the earth’ the mother of six said.”

So, here’s to the Class of 2014. May they do a better job of addressing the problems than their parents and grandparents did.